Transactions, including credit card transactions, are used for a great number of purchases and sales between merchants and cardholders. A normal card transaction, however, involves a number of parties, including an account holder who possesses a card, a merchant, an acquirer, an issuer and a transaction handler. By way of example, and not by way of limitation, a well known transaction handler is the VISA™ card association. The acquirer is a business entity, e.g., a commercial bank, that has a business relationship with the merchant and receives some or all of the transactions from that merchant. The issuer is a business entity which issues the card to the cardholder. The card association typically has a network of processing applications which facilitates issuance of cards and processing of card transactions. By way of example, and not by way of limitation, the VISA™ card association provides the VisaNet™ network services. The VisaNet™ network services provide computer systems to process transactions in a reliable and secure manner.
In a transaction, a card representing the account of an account holder is tendered to a merchant. The merchant, acquirer, issuer and transaction handler cooperatively determine whether to authorize the account holder's requested transaction. Sometimes, the authorization for the transaction is not received by the merchant. It would be an advance in the art to provide one or more techniques that permit a merchant to extend credit to the account of an account holder after the merchant receives a denial for authorization from an acquirer, where the one or more techniques include allowing the merchant to ascertain recent information upon demand about the cardholder's account. The merchant's inquiry into a cardholder's account information may provide information sufficient to permit the merchant to enter into the transaction using the account of the cardholder that otherwise would have resulted in a refusal of the transaction and a lost transaction to a loyal, high volume customer.